An edible garden in Wellington, NZ

I’ll have a few more like that please… September 4, 2009

Stunning day. Started with a frost and continued with the lightest of wind and not a cloud in the sky. I’d love a few more like that.

Wearing:shorts, t-shirt and a sunhat.With the sun shining down and completely sheltered from the southerly, it was actually hot. Out of the sun it was COLD.

Freezing: heavy frost this morning, much more than the last one. Similar distribution over the garden, but it was harder, and it got into my potatoes. Hopefully they will be ok, but a couple of them a looking rather mushy.

Planting: Doyenne du Comice pear. Eventually this will be espaliered along the fence. I’m not quite sure what to do with it at this stage, but at least it has the bottom two branches in the right place.

Constructing: a bamboo frame for my peas and beans. I’m hoping that once it is complete it will be quite robust and stand up to the wind. It runs north/ south and there is green plastic mesh on the east side for the peas.

Recycling: old pantyhose. On the west side of my bean/ pea frame, I’ve got old pantyhose running from the bamboo pole along the top to the ground. Or I will once I’ve got some more weedmat staples to hold them down. Right now they are just hanging and look really silly. It’s a bit of an experiment, but I’ve tried beans on bamboo poles, but the bamboo is a little slippery. They like to have something for the main stem to twine around, but climb better up something rough. Here it is half-finished.

Sowing: peas (south to north), Alderman’s tall climbing, sugar snap, Chinese snow pea and Carouby. I think some of the seed is oldish, I noticed that the sugar snap said sow by Jan 2009. Oops. If it isn’t up in a few weeks, I’ll buy some more.

Also sowing: beans (south to north) scarlet runner and Fardenlosa. It may be a bit early, since I had frost this morning, so I’ve put in a few and if that doesn’t work I’ll sow some more later. I’m also going to do some in pots, as that seems to work ok last year with the Dalmatian beans.

Sprinkling: diatomaceous earth over my brassicas and anything else I thought might be tasty to a snail.

Germinating: my yellow cucumbers. These are from saved seed, the original bought seed had pretty slow and unreliable germination. So I’m pleased that the seed I managed to save is good.

Also germinating: more tomatoes, Dianthus, lovage and celery. I think that there might be a couple of radishes coming up in the root vegetable garden, but I need to leave it a bit longer to be sure that they aren’t just weeds.

Checking: the wood on my Qualicum and Autumn Bliss raspberries. The canes seem to be still alive, even though there is no sign of life, so hopefully they will eventually sprout.

Noticing: spring bulbs don’t like growing through alpaca fibre mulch.

Eating: silverbeet, celery, salad greens

Flowering: tulips, daffodils, Nemophila and more strawberries.

Advertisements

Like this:

LikeLoading...

Related

2 Responses to “I’ll have a few more like that please…”

I’m impressed with what you have achieved and how it is all fitting together…..I’m looking at my flower garden and wondering what edibles I could squeeze in or what could be sacrificed in favour of food! I need…er…want more land!!!
I had an idea which I suspect wouldn’t find favour with H….we do have some north facing roof….seems a bit of a shame not to put it to good use….with a plant or two (and some serious reinforcing!) 😉